Neocon -- Now you have TWELVE movie directors (counting Chaplin)!!! 12 out of the first 100 spots??!! Surely you jest, even for a movie buff. And let me repeat a point I have made before: if you are going to have both Hayek and Friedman, you HAVE to have Keynes. (And if you are going to stick two "religious" authors at the end -- Chesterton & C. S. Lewis -- how about a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Buddhist? There are worthy candidates.) Can't have a lopsided century, after all. :-)
And who the blazes is Barry Gordey? And Smokey Robinson -- who's he?
Pop stars again?? Pop stars are POPULAR (with some people), which is not the same thing as being INFLUENTIAL.
Another cavil. Being GREAT is not the same as being INFLUENTIAL, either. For example, in my opinion, the GREATEST 20th century novelist (MY favorite, anyway) was Thomas Mann. But he was nowhere near as influential as Joyce. Other writers borrowed from Joyce,
adapted & incorporated literary devices and themes that he pioneered. For that matter, it's impossible to imagine 20th century English/American literature without Joyce. But nobody imitated Mann -- he was inimitable. He loomed -- alone.
At the same time, let me again recognize that it is easier (and more fun, too) to criticize other people's lists than to construct one's own. <g>
Joan |
